So, in going through 1998 for “Into the Vault”, I skipped over ECW Living Dangerously 1998. I’ll admit, ECW pay-per-views can be a bit of a task to cover because the flow of each show tends to be so funky. Some matches go too long while other matches that probably could’ve been dope don’t have enough time.
However, there is always a match that really stands out in the card. Let’s find out what was the best and what gets put in “the rest” pile for ECW Living Dangerously 1998!
The Best
Off the bat: Rob Van Dam taking on 2 Cold Scorpio was the strongest match on the show. With the mixed bag that this show was, this was the one thing that looked like it would deliver on paper and it did just that. Both men came out looking evenly matched and threw their best at their opponent. Prime RVD would deliver if his opponent was athletic enough and Scorpio was the same.
The only downside here is that these guys put in all that work without any stakes. It was pretty much an exhibition that got the most time on the card.
Our second match worth watching from ECW Living Dangerously 1998 was Taz taking on Bam Bam Bigelow for the ECW Television title. While it doesn’t top the RVD vs. Scorpio bout, it does have more bite to it in that there was some story heading into it. There’s a history between these two here and the intensity got to the point where they both fell while the Human Suplex Machine had Bigelow locked in the Tazmission.
In a show that was far from good for the most part, this match delivered one of the company’s most iconic moments.
The Rest
The opening bout saw the Full Blooded Italians lose to the team of Jerry Lynn and Chris Chetti. It wasn’t a bad match but it did nothing for me. To be honest, the FBI did little for me until Little Guido began mixing it up with the ECW high-flyers and teamed with Tony Mamaluke.
The same could be said about Masato Tanaka vs. Doug Furnas. Both were good at this point in 1998 but this match just did nothing for me either. Perhaps it should’ve switched match lengths with the opener to give these two more room to groove.
I don’t think that the three-way tag team match featuring New Jack and Spike Dudley taking on The Dudley Boyz and The Hardcore Chair Swingin’ Freaks is slept on or overlooked. It’s more that fans have seen the match or some iteration of the match multiple times already from ECW. Personally, I love messy, chaotic matches like this but they need to be given a time limit where it’s like “OK, wrap this sh** up, now.”
This one went a little longer than necessary but it was enjoyable.
Tommy Dreamer taking on Justin Credible was probably as close to a third-place bout as we were going to get. It was solid for the most part but the outside interference—while 100-percent expected—was unnecessary. These two actually should’ve gotten a little more time as I was kind of rocking with this bout.
The “Dueling Canes match” was a match I’d seen featured a bit in promotion for ECW videos—that, the barbed wire matches, and Dreamer being chokeslammed by Brian Lee—but watching it was somewhat meh. It went as you’d expect. If you’ve seen a brawl by either of these two, you’ve seen them all, actually. Just make the canes a focal point and you’ve got this match.
The finish of the match with an interfering RVD teaming up with Sabu to put The Sandman through a table worked for me but the rest of the match was skippable. Mind you, this is seven matches into an eight-match event that really only had two worthwhile matches.
As with the main event between the teams of Al Snow and Lance Storm and Shane Douglas and Chris Candido, this match had to deal with working around a damaged ring—not that it would’ve been that much better with an intact ring.
Speaking of the main event, it featured the right stars for something that could’ve been good but again there were limitations—including time, apparently. What we ended up with was something that honestly could’ve been put on Hardcore TV.
ECW Living Dangerously 1998 Verdict: Bronze Medal (2.2/5)
Oof. Just…a hard oof. This was not a pay-per-view to buy nor was it worth sitting through. The production didn’t help either. There are times when ECW can be forgiven for bad-to-mediocre production—this isn’t one of those times. The action didn’t deliver to where you could say “The production doesn’t take away from it.” Mind you, it doesn’t help either.
I’m giving RVD vs. 2 Cold Scorpio the nod for the match of the show with Taz vs. Bam Bam Bigelow getting runner-up honors.
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